Time After Time
by Annamonk
Summary: James Tiberius Kirk discovers something unusual about himself and heads off on a quest to save a very special someone. She and her merry band of cohorts will help him face the darkness within and without. This is not my moon, I just love terraforming it.
1. Chapter 1

"You're buying junk now?" Bones rolled his eyes and pointed at the dusty chunk of rock his best friend had carted back to their temporary living quarters.

"It's not junk." Jim Kirk looked down at the odd tablet he'd found in the small curio shop just off base. "It's an artifact from before the Eugenics Wars. It was found in ruined portion of London. It's unusual because of the runes."

"Give the thing to Spock or Uhura." Bones smirked. "They might understand it."

Jim glared at him and gathered the stone to his chest. Bones managed not to chuckle at his truculent expression. It was best not to piss off the Captain especially if you were forced to live with him while awaiting new orders.

"I'm not stupid." Jim glared at him and hefted his stone up higher against his chest. "I don't need Spock or Nyota to figure this out."

"Sure you don't, Jim." Bones shook his head. "You're a Captain, Jim, not a linguist."

"I may not be a linguist, but I can read. A stone doesn't talk." Jim stood up and left the room with his precious slab of useless granite.

"Thank our stars for that." Bones chuckled as he sipped his Saurian brandy. "If he thought the stone was talking to him, we'd be in real trouble."

* * *

Jim Kirk pushed his research notes around on his desk and frowned. He'd tried several different approaches to translating the runes on the stone, but none of them had worked. He was certain the stone was a piece of bluestone from Wales. The tricorders had told him that before they'd burned out. He didn't look at the seven fried scanners. He'd given up on that line of inquiry.

He considered going to Spock. The Vulcan was brilliant and would probably recognize the runic language instantly. Involving him was the smart thing to do, but the very notion of letting him near the stone was repellent.

"Bones is right." Jim pushed back from his desk. "There is something wrong with me. I'm obsessing over a rock."

He stood up and looked around the room. There were actual notes written on paper he'd replicated taped to the walls. His main screen had a map of prewar London on display. He'd been looking for any buildings made with this stonek, but he'd found nothing.

There were those stones in Wiltshire, but Stonehenge was a long way from the city street. He'd searched for any mention of similar stones but come up empty. He pushed his fingers through his hair and let out his breath slowly.

Every failure he'd had over the last few years, every stupid mistake, played through his mind. He didn't enjoy the periods between missions. He needed the myriad issues that arose while he was on ship to keep him from slipping down the what if rabbit hole.

He knew that hindsight was perfect. He didn't need Bones to tell him that. He knew he wasn't the fastest, strongest, or smartest person in any room. He didn't need Spock to tell him that. He knew he wasn't perfect. He didn't need Uhura to tell him that.

He'd always believed he had something special to offer. He'd been brash and determined. He'd been a fool.

He was just a man with a legendary father. He rushed in when others examined situations carefully. His life was a mess. He needed his ship. He needed the endless minutiae of his job to distract him from his failings and from the foreign blood coursing through his veins.

Kirk paced back to the stone. He'd gone to the stupid shop with some woman he'd met in the park. She was blonde and bland, but she might have occupied his attention for a time if he hadn't found this stupid rock.

He'd seen it there, covered in dust. The card explaining its provenance had captured his imagination. This stupid rock was a relic of a time before he'd failed, of a time before Khan and his kind had battled for supremacy. He'd wanted it as a symbol. He'd never intended to analyze the thing. Bones' snide comments had fired him up in a way nothing else could have.

He lifted the rock and held it close to his chest. It was odd that he found the rock comforting. It was a hunk of stone with some nonsense carved into it.

"Keep your secrets." He rested his chin on the top of the rock. "You're a door with no key like that story Mom used to tell me. Most doors used to have keys, but every so often a man would come across a door with no key and no lock. He had to know the magic word, but it wasn't 'open sesame' or 'abracadabra'. It wasn't even 'please'. It was a weird word, like a Hawaiian greeting with legs. 'Alohamora'."

He felt something tingle along his spine and shoot down his arms. He grimaced as blue light shot from his hand and soaked into the rock. He stood up and set the thing down on his desk.

The whole thing began to glow and a strange scent filled the air. He rubbed at his nose and blinked. The stone appeared to be melting. He looked around the room in a panic, but the only thing melting was the stone. He took a deep breath and relaxed. It wasn't some hallucinogenic burning through his system.

The odd silvery liquid that was formerly rock coalesced into the form of a tall, angular blond man. Jim blinked and rubbed at his eyes. The figure seemed to be almost solid.

"Hello." The figure spoke with an English accent. "I imagine you're somewhat panicked. The work that went into this was rather delicate and mostly lost to time. I had speeches and explanations planned, but I imagine Hermione will be able to explain most of it. In a minute you'll find that you know how to find her. The vaporized memory will settle into your mind. This pensieve and the keystone will help her catch up. Tell her I was wrong. Tell her I should have turned my back on tradition." The figure appeared to take a deep breath. "Salazar, this is hard. I know she'll watch this. I know she'll grimace at the sight of me." The figure fisted his hands and then released his grip. "Hermione, I did my best to give you lot a chance. There is so much I want to say, but it feels wrong to burden you with my feelings. I loved you. I still do. I chose safety and my family. I did what I thought was best. I know it was the wrong choice. Regrets have defined my life. Be well and be happy."

The man disappeared, and Jim blinked. He felt an odd pressure in his head. He rubbed the space between his eyes as the sensation became painful. Bright flashes of a brunette woman laughing flared in his memory and caught his attention before they faded.

He took a deep breath and realized he knew how to find her. He knew how to save her. He stepped next to the odd stone bowl and plucked up the blue key stone. It wasn't tiny, but it would fit in his travel bag with a week's worth of clothes well enough.

"I'm crazy." Jim looked down at the stone in his hands. "This might be Khan's blood. What if none of this is real?"

He set the stone down and took two steps back from it. He could hear her laughter and see her smiling face, but he didn't know her. He'd never met her.

"Hermione." He licked his lips nervously. "I guess I'd better have Bones come along. What if you're hurt?"

* * *

Bones frowned as Jim paced around the shuttle cabin. He glanced at Spock and saw the Vulcan's eyebrows raise ever so slightly. Watching Jim come apart at the seems wasn't supposed to be part of their leave.

"If we can't resolve this, I will gave to file a report with Starfleet Medical." Bones fussed with his bag. "They might ground him."

"That is a possibility." Spock never took his eyes off Jim. "Our captain often acts rashly, but he does not do so without a reason. We must see this through to understand what is driving him. Worrying about the outcome may be premature."

"So, you think we're going to England to find some woman that Jim knows but has never met?" Bones felt the urge to pace himself. "Why did I think bringing you along was a good idea?"

"It was unusually logical behavior for you." Spock glanced at him. "Perhaps you are both altered in some way."

Bones bit back the comment that sprang to mind. There was a slim chance Spock might be more useful than he was irritating. He glanced at the Vulcan.

"A damn slim chance." Bones grumbled and turned his gaze back to his troubled friend. "A damn slim chance indeed."

* * *

 _ **Author's Note**_

 _I was innocently working on a different story when James Tiberius Kirk started poking around in my brain. I tried to make him fit into my other Star Trek crossover, but he was having none of it. My muse seems to have a crush on him at the moment, so here we are._

 _Hope you enjoy it._

 _-Anna_


	2. Chapter 2

Spock examined the remnants of the stone circle in the distance. Some ancient human culture had erected it and every culture since had theorized about their motives. He felt the various theories were far more useful in assessing their creators than the stones.

He took a deep breath and examined his companions.

Dr. McCoy was glaring at their captain while the younger man sat cross legged on the ground. The doctor's agitation was quite visible. He was making no effort to hide it. He paced and rubbed at the back of his neck. He muttered under his breath, forgetting, as humans were inclined to do, that Vulcan hearing made such a practice less than effective. As the day progressed, McCoy's concerns pushed him toward aggression.

James Tiberius Kirk was oddly still. The man was almost always moving, so this prolonged period of peaceful meditation was unusual. McCoy's concerns about unusual behavior seemed valid. The captain was not behaving within his usual parameters.

"There is nothing here." McCoy hissed under his breath. "We've scanned it. We've tromped about like fools. I'm a doctor not a farm animal."

Spock looked over at the doctor and raised an eyebrow. He saw the moment McCoy realized his mutterings were loud enough for others to hear. The quick heat in the man's cheeks was accompanied by further irritation.

"We need to get him back to London." The doctor gestured to the captain with one hand. "This isn't healthy."

"When he accepts that his visions are false, he will leave." Spock looked toward the sun as it slanted through the stones. "If we try to force him, he will return without us."

Jim listened as his companions chatted about him, but he didn't care. They'd scanned everything around him. They'd measured every level and even scanned a sheep or two. They were depending on logic, science, and medicine.

He was putting his faith in instinct.

He'd done it for most of his life, and it had never led him wrong. He took a deep breath in and held it. There was something in the air here. He could smell it. There was a hint of something smoke like underneath the damp green all around them. It teased at his mind and sparked at the edge of his vision. His fingers moved occasionally as eddies of that something seemed to brush against them.

His companions were humoring him. He knew they thought this was stress related. He wasn't a fool. He took a deep breath and held it in his lungs for a bit before letting it flow out slowly over his lips.

They would be surprised.

She was here somewhere. Hermione. The woman he kept seeing in flashes of laughter and joy was here. It made no sense, but he knew it was true.

"We've been here for hours, Jim." Bones stepped closer to him. "Maybe we should head back. Have some lunch."

"I'm not hungry." Jim pushed the words through his teeth. "I want to be here."

"Well, you want to be flat out crazy." Bones snarled and paced around him. "This is madness and not the good kind."

"Then let me be mad." Jim looked up into the hazel eyes of his friend. "Let me have this little bit of crazy. I can't explain it to you. This isn't something I can share."

"Why?" Bones planted his hands on his hips and glared down at Jim. "I'm here. I'm trying to help, but, damn it, Jim, I'm a doctor not a mind reader."

"As edifying as this discourse must be for you both, I think we may have a situation that needs our immediate attention." Spock stepped into Jim's field of vision. "There is some observable time dilation between this region and that of the stone circle."

"That can't be." Bones spun around and looked at the stones. "You can't see that, not even with your Vulcan eyesight."

"The shadows no longer align." Spock gestured toward the shadow of one of the stones with a quick movement of his arm. "I imagine you can see that with your own human eyes."

While Spock and Bones argued, Jim steadied his breathing and tried to focus on that whisper of something dancing in the back of his mind. Pain lanced up through his body from his gut. He felt like something huge was anchored to him and an odd force was winding the reel inside his body.

His skin flashed hot in the cool air. He felt sweat sliding down his face, but he could not raise his hands to wipe at it. It felt like he was trapped between two pieces of hull plating during a shield test. Each breath he managed to drag into his lungs burned.

Closing his eyes, Kirk leaned forward and concentrated on the pain and the odd draw behind it. There was something just beyond his reach, something he needed. He ignored the pain and concentrated on drawing that something closer.

Spock grabbed Bones and dragged him back as blue flames danced along their captain's body. He blinked twice and watched something that he had believed to be a legend of his father's culture happen in front of him. The fire danced around James Kirk, but it didn't burn him.

"Let me go." McCoy fought his hold. "Jim's in trouble. He's burning."

"No." Spock looked over the doctor's shoulder. "He is the source of the flame, but he isn't fuel for it."

"What green goblin nonsense are you spouting, Spock?" McCoy pushes against the Vulcan's arms. "There's fire all around him."

"He is unharmed, but there is no guarantee that those flames would leave us without injury." Spock took a deep breath. Controlling his emotions was far more difficult in the face of this proof that his people's deeper legends were factual. "It is likely a transformative fire. We must not interfere."

"There is no such thing as transformative fire. Spontaneous combustion was debunked centuries ago." Bones flailed and fought against him. "We need to help him."

"We must not. We have no evidence that any action we might take would actually help him." Spock pulled them both back another step from their captain.

"We should try." McCoy sagged against him. "We have to try."

Spock watched as the flames flared brighter and felt helpless. Logic offered no comfort to him. He longed for his mother's illogical faith.

The earth pulsed under his fingers and the pain began to fade. He felt something settle under his skin as if it had always belonged. The pull inside him eased, and he opened his eyes. A trilithon stood as a doorway into a cave. It looked to be made of bluestone, but it was heavily carved.

"What in blazes is that?" Bones sounded panicked. "We've fallen down some sort of rabbit hole now."

Jim took a deep breath and pushed his body up until he was on his feet again. He felt something deep in the ground pulsing up and through him. A welcome.

"Croeso." He whispered the oddly familiar and unfamiliar word. The land welcomed him in some odd way; a child born amongst the stars, a man always searching.

He dragged another breath in through his nose and expelled it through his lips. The odd scent of fire disappeared and left the scent of something warm, and comforting. He moved toward the cave easily. He heard Bones and Spock arguing and trying to reach him, but they were not of this place. They couldn't interfere without his consent. He stepped up to the great stones and laid his hand upon one. He felt the power welling up from the ground flow through him and into the stone before he stepped through the henge into the darkness.


End file.
